Mars City Shadowrun

Laying Low

And some gunrunning!

The team, following One Shot Wade‘s instructions, hide out in the undercity after the car chase with LoneStar. UB! and TY hear some news from gang sources that Yoleus was indeed killed in the ambush. Wade is thrilled with the outcome, as noone seems to suspect that anyone besides the Star was involved. He has put out feelers to the remaining Mad Martian LT’s about joining up with the Problem Children, instead of getting into a war of succession for control of the MM’s, as Yoleus’ obvious successors are both also dead or captured.

Wade also suggests that the team take revenge on LoneStar for Yoleus’ death, and the raid on UB!‘s party. Wade suggests hitting one of the brand new fortified LS undercity precinct houses, to show that the Star can’t hold the turf. While there, Wade wants the team to acquire any info they can on LS employees so that the gangs can target them away from work. He also wants any intel on informants in the undercity. He tells the team that they should be able to make a decent profit fencing all the drugs & gear that they will find in the precinct’s evidence room. He also tells Tobias to get the Knight Errant guns flowing, pronto. Tobias starts a new meme of tagging a modified phallic LoneStar logo and a “BoneStar” label throughout the matrix and irl.

Tobias, UB!, and TY head out the the smuggler’s compound to fix it up a bit. Tobias and UB! deal with wiring and setting up defense systems, while KE contractors add in escape tunnels and some other handy features. Elton Massey & Wade agree to pay the team a monthly rate for their work as middlemen, allowing them to maintain the hideout for free, while still each pocketing 1000 nuyen.

Tobias also gets a call from Daedelus, asking him to look into some rumors for the Exchange. a disturbing number of runners have been disappearing of late, after getting nabbed on runs or picked up in LS sweeps. There are seemingly no records of their existence or demise, however. Daedelus puts Tobias in touch with Marlowe, an ork who knows one of the missing runners.

Marlowe reveals that his team was hired through an anonymous Johnson (who he now believes to be triad connected) to do a carbomb hit (UB! recalls rigging the bomb, some time ago, as a favor for the exchange). Marlowe’s team consisted of himself (the face), a dwarf rigger/pilot named Mikko Asparen, and two hackers that he works with sometimes. After the bomb went off, they found out they had hit not only a mafia target, but also his young children. Worried for their future, the team split up and went to ground. Mikko’s hideout got raided, supposedly by LS, but there’s been no word of him since. K recalls that Mikko was Harmony Craig Bottow‘s former bff, and Tobias finds that he left Evo shortly after HCB’s death was (falsely) reported from Deimos prison moon. He apparently joined up with Marlowe’s team sometime after that.

Rooster calls his LS streetcop buddy and finds out that there is a record of a tipline call about Mikko’s hideout, which should have been followed up on, but there are no further records. Rooster also gets LS’s undercity HR number, hoping to gain access to the precinct house in disguise as a vending machine repairman. Rooster and K are also interested in the mafia angle of the carbombing, as John Caruthers had asked Rooster to look into this very event. K calls Caruthers, and they reconnect, and Caruthers tells K to stay in touch this time. He also tells K that his uncle (the carbomb victim) was working on some blackmail against a rising star city councilwoman with Triad ties: Lihua Wan.

When questioned by Sanja, Wan effectively admits hiring the shadowrunners, or at least having knowledge of their activities. The team decides not to act on this yet, however, as they don’t want to end up in the middle of a mafia/triad war. Especially since different team members have loyalties to different sides….

They decide to research Mikko’s last known whereabouts, and then raid the cop shop, hoping to find more info therein.

Comments

From the diary of Lodestone: More of a loose cannon even than UltraBoi, under the right circumstances, Thank You is a madman. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on him. His superstition and lack of humanity will betray him, eventually; and he’ll make the wrong move for the wrong reasons and end up dead. And I don’t want to be around when that happens. As a shaman, I see signs everywhere, but they empower my decisions rather than command them.

The Tale of the Brigand and the Evil Guards (con’t.)

Jack and his friends hide in the one of the villages outside of the Red City walls, with their friend, the leader of the Good Brigands, who only would steal from the very evil and the wealthiest that all lived inside the Red City and he would use the money to help the villagers outside of the walls. This leader, along with the leader of the Good Guards, have decided that it is time to supply the villagers with more swords and spears so that they could help rise up and defeat the Evil Guards forever, driving them far away to other lands. It is a good plan, and Jack is pleased with how clever it is.

The Evil Guards, angry at being tricked by Jack and his friends, start kidnapping villagers, where they are never heard from again. One of the villagers that is kidnapped is an old friend of the late Mighty Bard, and Jack and the rest of the party feel that it is important to rescue him.

“We should burn down their fort in the village,” said the Firey Barbarian.

“But if the Mighty Bard’s friend is in there, he might also be burned and die,” said Jack.

“We must attack it at full strength then,” said the Grey Paladin.

“But if the Mighty Bard’s friend is not in there, he may be executed because we tried to rescue him,” said Jack.

“Then we must have the villagers rise up against them,” said the Spring-heeled Bowman. “We have given them swords and spears and shields.”

“But if we do that, then many of them will die, and we wish to have them rise up when we can fully count on the support of the Good Guards,” said Jack.

“But if not by fire or spear or sword, how will we rescue the Mighty Bard’s friend?” asked the Huntsman.

“We will use cleverness, and use the greed of the guards against them,” said Jack. “Just leave this to me.”

The party and the Good Brigands were astonished to see Jack prepare to walk in to the Evil Guard’s fort in the village alone and unarmed.